Fatal Shootings Research Articles

Implementing a stand-alone investigative unit to clear non-fatal shooting cases

Abstract This research contributes to the small but growing body of scholarship examining non-fatal shooting cases. This study is particularly important considering the recent increase in the number of shooting incidents in the USA, and the fact that there are often many more non-fatal shooting cases than fatal outcomes. The Buffalo Police Department developed a specific investigative unit focusing exclusively on non-fatal shootings with the expectation that this would allow one group of detectives to focus on all homicides, while the other group focused exclusively on non-fatal shootings. Data from the Buffalo Police Department included both fatal and non-fatal shooting incidents, and an interrupted time series analysis was used to determine if there was an increase in the number of cases cleared by arrest. Results indicated that the implementation of the specific investigative unit did not influence clearances for non-fatal shootings. Furthermore, contrary to expectations, the numbers of clearances for homicides in the post-intervention period were significantly lower than those in the pre-intervention period. Two conclusions are offered. First, the non-fatal shooting unit was not structured in a way that mimicked a homicide unit, thus lacking the resources to clear non-fatal shooting cases. Secondly, separating investigative units created a ‘silo effect’ where the units may not have communicated enough on similar incidents.

Beyond the “Ferguson Effect” on Crime: Examining its Influence on Law Enforcement Personnel

The purpose of the current study is to examine the influence tensions over high-profile officer-involved shootings have had on Atlanta police officers’ ability to do their jobs and whether these impacts vary by officer race. Data was collected between August and October of 2016. A total of 241 police officers across six zones completed the self-administered survey. Findings indicate that while white officers, on average, felt the impacts of recent tensions surrounding officer-involved shootings more strongly, non-white officers were more likely to say they would leave policing if offered a better paying job in another field. This study provides insight into racial differences in the impacts of recent tensions and protests over fatal officer-involved shootings.

Factors associated with police shooting mortality: A focus on race and a plea for more comprehensive data.

ObjectivesTo quantify nonfatal injurious police shootings of people and examine the factors associated with victim mortality.MethodsWe gathered victim-level data on fatal and nonfatal injurious police shootings from four states that have such information publicly available: Florida (2009–14), Colorado (2010–19), Texas (2015–19), and California (2016–19). For each state, we examined bivariate associations between mortality and race/ethnicity, gender, age, weapon, and access to trauma care. We also estimated logistic regression models predicting victim mortality in each state.ResultsForty-five percent of these police shooting victims (N = 1,322) did not die. Black–white disparities were more pronounced in nonfatal injurious police shootings than in fatal police shootings. Overall, Black victims were less likely than white victims to die from their wound(s). Younger victims were less likely to die from their wound(s), as well as those who were unarmed.ConclusionsRacial and age disparities in police shootings are likely more pronounced than previous estimates suggest.Policy implicationsOther states should strongly consider compiling data like that which is currently being gathered in California. Absent data on nonfatal injurious police shootings–which account for a large share of deadly force incidents–researchers and analysts must be cautious about comparing and/or ranking jurisdictions in terms of their police-involved fatality rates.

Negative perceptions of race relations: A brief report examining the impact of news media coverage of police shootings, and actual fatal police shootings

ABSTRACT Data from several polling companies have suggested a precipitous decline in perceptions of race relations over the past decade. This study sought to examine whether national perceptions of race relations were shaped more by actual fatal shootings of unarmed Black men or by news media coverage of police shootings or, put more directly, whether it had a factual basis or was driven by societal narratives. Time series analysis examined the correlation between perceptions of race relations against both actual fatal police shootings of unarmed Black men as opposed to a leading national newspaper’s coverage of police shootings. Results indicated that perceptions of race relations were correlated with news media coverage but not actual fatal police shootings of unarmed Black men. However, the examination of residuals revealed no correlation between these. These results suggest that race relations are associated with news media coverage in ways that reflect underlying cultural shifts rather than direct association.

Using social media for flight path safety assessment

Purpose Artificial intelligence (AI)-based systems can save the lives of many people by assessing the safety of flight paths. Unfortunately, the world witnessed a horrible event in January 2020 with the case of flight 752 of Ukrainian International Airlines from Tehran to Kiev and it has prompted us to ask how AI can prevent such events by warning to flight path planners. This paper aims to propose a framework for assessing the safety of flight paths from a shooting of an airplane by air defense systems installed on the path. Unlike the existing studies, this study takes a new look at pre-flight risk assessment by using textual information in social and news networks. To this end, the authors use existing information retrieval techniques to identify high flight risk areas by examining the news articles, comments, posts, tweets, etc., in social media and then estimate the probability of targeting a passenger aircraft by the air defense systems probably installed on high-risk areas with the help of a statistical model. This estimation can then be used by fight planners to avoid such events. Design/methodology/approach To design a framework for estimating the probability of a fatal shooting of an airplane by air defense systems installed on its flight path, the authors have used the idea of information retrieval in conjunction with statistical methods. The authors have extracted some significant variables in the shooting of flights and proposed an AI-based framework to estimate the probability of a fatal shooting of an airplane during its flight and sketched a case study for using machine learning approaches to assist with flight path planning. As a case study, the authors covered flight 752 to explain the usefulness of the proposed framework in this context. Findings Unlike the existing methods, this study investigates flight path safety assessment from the social media and crowdsourcing perspective. In this study, the authors proposed an AI-based framework to avoid aviation hazards by estimating the probability of a shooting of an airplane by air defense systems installed on its flight path. Moreover, this study was designed to show how estimating the safety of flight paths by using AI-based methods can help flight planners to avoid such events and gain further insights into the use of AI-based systems in pre-flight risk assessment. Originality/value The idea behind the proposed method is original and as the authors’ best knowledge, there is no similar framework using social media for flight path safety assessment.

Race, Trust in Police, and Mental Health Crisis Support

This abstract is incorrect. Please see the corrected abstract here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15365042221083001 . This report examines police-public encounters that resulted in the fatal shooting of civilians during 2015 and 2016. How police contact was initiated varies by race/ethnicity, age, sex, mental health status, and whether (or how) the individual killed by police was armed with a weapon. This crucial information sheds further light on fatal police shootings.

What effect does gun-related violence have on the attractiveness of a residential area? The case of Stockholm, Sweden

PurposeThis study aims to analyse the effect of gun-related violence on housing values, controlling for the area's crime levels and locational factors. Previous studies that aimed to find a causal connection between crime and housing values used instrument variables to solve the endogeneity problem. Here, the authors have instead been able to take advantage of the fact that shootings have occurred in random time and space. This has made it possible to estimate models to create windows around the shooting (event) and to estimate the causal effects of the shootings. Thus, the authors aim to contribute to the regression discontinuity design method in this context to estimate the short-term effects.Design/methodology/approachUsing the regression discontinuity design method, the authors can estimate the short-term effects of shootings.FindingsFindings from the analysis indicate that shootings directly affect those who are impacted by shootings and indirectly affect the environments where shootings occur. The indirect effect of shootings is momentary as it is capitalised directly in housing values in the immediate area. The effect also appears to be relatively long-term and persistent as housing values have not returned to the price level before the shooting 100–200 days after the shooting. The capitalisation effect is higher the closer one gets to the central parts of the city. On the other hand, the capitalisation effect is not higher or lower in areas with a higher crime rate per capita.Originality/valueThe article contributes to the previous literature in several ways. First and foremost, it provides an explicit analysis of shootings in built-up areas and their hypothesised effect on property prices through the impact on attractiveness and perceived safety. As far as the authors know, no study has analysed this issue on the international level or in Sweden. In this way, the authors aim to develop a study that can provide critical knowledge about one of the adverse effects of shootings. The authors also contribute to the literature by utilising unique data material, which allows the authors to merge information from the police about the exact location of shootings in the Stockholm area with data on sales of apartments in the same residential areas. In addition to the exact location of the shootings (coordinates), the authors also have access to data about whether the shootings led to injuries or deaths. Thus, the authors have separated the effect of shootings and fatal shootings, which has not been done before. Finally, the authors set out to highlight the results as a contribution to the debate on shootings.

Non-fatal gun violence and community health behaviors: A neighborhood analysis in Philadelphia.

Research shows that community violence is associated with an array of negative health outcomes, yet no study has examined the specific association between different types of gun violence and collective health behaviors in local neighborhoods. Using data from neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia, this study examines the association between total, fatal, and non-fatal gun violence and measures of physical inactivity, obesity, sleep, and smoking. We find the rate of non-fatal shootings is associated with a composite measure of health behaviors, net of all neighborhood-level covariates and general community violence. Ancillary analyses show that non-fatal shootings are particularly associated with physical inactivity and obesity. Notably, fatal shootings are not associated with any behavioral health measure after accounting for nonlethal shootings. The results support improved data collection efforts to measure non-fatal shootings across the U.S. and greater attention to the collective health consequences of gun violence in local communities.

The role of domestic violence in fatal mass shootings in the United States, 2014\u20132019

BackgroundFatal mass shootings, defined as four or more people killed by gunfire, excluding the perpetrator, account for a small percentage of firearm homicide fatalities. Research has not extensively focused on the role of domestic violence (DV) in mass shootings in the United States. This study explores the role of DV in mass shootings in the United States.MethodsUsing 2014–2019 mass shooting data from the Gun Violence Archive, we indexed our data by year and mass shooting and collected the number of deaths and injuries. We reviewed news articles for each mass shooting to determine if it was 1) DV-related (i.e., at least one victim of a mass shooting was a dating partner or family member of the perpetrator); 2) history of DV (i.e., the perpetrator had a history of DV but the mass shooting was not directed toward partners or family members); or 3) non-DV-related (i.e., the victims were not partners or family members, nor was there mention of the perpetrator having a history of DV). We conducted descriptive analyses to summarize the percent of mass shootings that were DV-related, history of DV, or non-DV-related, and analyzed how many perpetrators died during the incidents. We conducted one-way ANOVA to examine whether there were differences in the average number of injuries or fatalities or the case fatality rates (CFR) between the three categories. One outlier and 17 cases with unknown perpetrators were excluded from our main analysis.ResultsWe found that 59.1% of mass shootings between 2014 and 2019 were DV-related and in 68.2% of mass shootings, the perpetrator either killed at least one partner or family member or had a history of DV. We found significant differences in the average number of injuries and fatalities between DV and history of DV shootings and a higher average case fatality rate associated with DV-related mass shootings (83.7%) than non-DV-related (63.1%) or history of DV mass shootings (53.8%). Fifty-five perpetrators died during the shootings; 39 (70.9%) died by firearm suicide, 15 (27.3%) were killed by police, and 1 (1.8%) died from an intentional overdose.ConclusionsMost mass shootings are related to DV. DV-related shootings had higher CFR than those unrelated to DV. Given these findings, restricting access to guns by perpetrators of DV may affect the occurrence of mass shootings and associated casualties.

Investigating fatal police shootings using the human factors analysis and classification framework (HFACS)

ABSTRACT Fatal police shootings are highly contentious and troublesome for normative standards of police legitimacy. Fatal police shooting investigations are often criticised because they lack impartiality, transparency and rigour. To assist policing practitioners and policymakers in the UK and beyond with managing these issues, we present a new analytical framework for investigating fatal policing shootings. We re-contextualise Shappell and Wiegmann’s ‘Human Factors Analysis and Classification System’ (HFACS) to test whether HFACS can be used during fatal police shootings investigations to identify contributory human factors. This study used HFACS to qualitatively analyse three high-profile fatal police shooting case-studies in the UK: (i) Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005; (ii) Azelle Rodney in 2005; and (iii) Mark Duggan in 2011. The results show that HFACS is a useful analytical framework. HFACS can be used to identify human factors and failures not discoverable by current methods for investigating fatal police shootings. We also offer the first empirical insights and contribute a more nuanced understanding of using HFACS to investigate fatal police shootings. We conclude by suggesting there are high-level and operational benefits in using HFACS and recommend avenues for further research to test HFACS in other policing contexts beyond the UK.

The Function of the Police Force: A Behavior-Analytic Review of the History of How Policing in America Came to Be.

The racial differentiation of policing in America has been widely researched and documented (Walker & Katz, 2008; Wilson & Kelling, 1982).Although these discrepancies are largely documented, there have been few changes within the policies, procedures and laws governing police officers. Theresults of this are two-fold. First, it has led to the continuation of individual acts of racism of police officers across the country. Second, it has upheld thesystemic racism that results in the discrepancies in outcomes between Black people and white people, making it more likely that Black individuals willinteract with police officers and have more negative outcomes as a result of these interactions. The reasons for this include lack of data regarding the race ofthe police officers involved in fatal officer-involved shootings, reliance on self-report of officers regarding instances of excessive force, and lack ofaccountability of individuals and departments alike. These issues are symptoms of the larger problems of individual and institutionalized racism that notonly increases racism within those within the police force, but also increases the likeliness that any police officer will engage in violence against a person ofcolor. To develop effective interventions that will change policing behaviors and the racism observed within the police force, one must first understand thehistorical development and function of policing and its intersection with both individual and institutional racism. This paper will provide a clear definition ofracism followed by a function-based behavior analytic examination of the historical development of policing in America.

Examining the Relevance of Contextual Gun Ownership on Fatal Police Shootings

Police use of deadly force represents a pressing public policy issue with implications for police-community relationships and equitable access to justice. A growing body of literature considering the structural factors influencing officers’ exposure to potential violence suggests that context plays a pivotal role in officer use of deadly force. This study explores how local gun ownership rates impact fatal police shootings for a national sample of large law enforcement agencies. Two-level negative binomial regression models examine the organizational and contextual correlates of fatal police shootings from 2014 to 2018, nesting 758 law enforcement agencies within 408 counties. Results indicate that agencies operating within areas characterized by high rates of violent crime and gun ownership were involved in more fatal police shootings. The findings underscore the importance of contextual cues of danger that police officers respond to during fatal police shootings.

Pre-Attack Warning Behaviors of 20 Adolescent School Shooters: A Case Study Analysis

This study examines the pre-attack warning behaviors of adolescent school shooters in the US. We conducted 20 case studies of adolescent school shooters in the United States that committed non-fatal or fatal shootings on K-12 school grounds between 1999 and 2016. We investigate whether the school shooters displayed warning behaviors before the attack, who in the perpetrator’s life was aware of these warning behaviors, and what if any actions were taken in response. Given the emergence of online forms of communication, we also investigate how adolescent school shooters may variably communicate warning behaviors in online and offline contexts.

Denver successfully sent MH professionals, not police, to hundreds of calls

Another U.S. city is reporting early success with a program that replaces traditional law enforcement responders with health care workers for some emergency calls, USA Today reported Feb. 8. Previously, Denver 911 operators only directed calls to police or fire department first responders. But the Support Team Assistance Response (STAR) pilot program created a third track for directing emergency calls to a two‐person team: a medic and a clinician, staffed in a van from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays (see MHW, Sept. 28, 2020). The STAR program, which launched in June, reported promising results in its six‐month progress report. The program aims to provide a “person‐centric mobile crisis response” to community members who are experiencing problems related to mental health, depression, poverty, homelessness or substance abuse issues. Denver is among several U.S. cities working to develop an alternative emergency responder model for people who are experiencing mental health crises, as police officers fatally shoot hundreds of people experiencing mental health crises every year, according to a Washington Post database of fatal shootings by on‐duty police officers. Since 2015, police have fatally shot nearly 1,400 people with mental illnesses, according to the database. Over the first six months of the pilot, Denver received more than 2,500 emergency calls that fell into the STAR program's purview, and the STAR team was able to respond to 748 calls. No calls required the assistance of police, and no one was arrested.

Investigating fatal police shootings using the human factors analysis and classification framework (HFACS)

Investigating fatal police shootings using the human factors analysis and classification framework (HFACS)

When COVID-19 and guns meet: A rise in shootings

ObjectiveThe present study examines the impact of the COVID-19 stay-at-home order on gun violence in Buffalo, New York: fatal shootings, all non-fatal shootings, non-fatal shootings with injury, and non-fatal shootings without injury. It also estimated its impact on gang and non-gang related shootings. MethodsWeekly crime data are analyzed at the city level using ARIMA and poisson models. Forecasting is used to verify the validity of both ARIMA and poisson models. ResultsThe effect of the pandemic was conditional upon the types of gun violence and impact models of intervention. The pandemic caused a temporary increase in fatal shootings while leading to a long-term increase in all non-fatal shootings, non-fatal shootings with injury, non-fatal shootings without injury, and gang related shootings. ConclusionsThe pandemic has changed the volume of gun violence possibly due to increased strain and/or changed routine activities. This study not only promotes further research but also has policy implications for public health and safety. From a public policy perspective, criminal justice agencies should focus more attention and resources on gun violence resulting from a sense of strain and fear among individuals during the pandemic.

The Interaction of Race and Place: Predictors of Fatal Police Shootings of Black Victims at the Incident, Census Tract, City, and State Levels, 2013–2018

We develop and analyze a multilevel model of fatal police shootings to better understand the interplay between individual-level and contextual-level factors in incidents of police use of deadly force. We use a three-level hierarchical logistic regression model to identify Census tract-, city-, and state-level predictors of fatal police shootings and a four-level model to identify predictors of fatal police shootings of black victims at the incident, Census tract, city, and state levels. We find that higher levels of concentrated disadvantage and interpersonal firearm violence in a Census tract are significant predictors of the likelihood of any fatal police shooting occurring in that tract. We also find that conditional upon a fatal police shooting having occurred in a Census tract, knowing that the victim was unarmed is a significant predictor of the likelihood that the victim was black. Three other predictors of a police shooting victim being black were a higher proportion of black residents in the Census tract, a greater presence of police officers in the city, and a higher level of black-white residential segregation in the state. We conclude that reducing excessive police use of deadly force requires consideration of not only the individual interactions between officers and citizens, but also the quantity of interactions and the characteristics of the place in which these interactions occur. Special consideration must be given to ameliorating the consequences of structural racism, including racial segregation, over-policing of predominantly black neighborhoods, concentrated disadvantage in segregated neighborhoods, and racial inequalities in income and wealth.

Healing the Wound

Healing the Wound Edward M. Bury (bio) The Nail in the Tree: Essays on Art, Violence and Childhood Carol Ann Davis Tupelo Press https://www.tupelopress.org/product/the-nail-inthe-tree/ 153 Pages; Print, $17.95 Over the past two decades, mass shootings in schools across America rank as perhaps the most egregious and bewildering crime of modern times due to the unspeakable actions of the perpetrators and the demographic of the victims — young people, still innocent and with life still before them. In The Nail in the Tree: Essays on Art, Violence, and Childhood, essayist and poet Carol Ann Davis incorporates first-hand memories of assuredly the most horrific school shooting of recent times into a therapeutic chronicle that also offers perceptions on modern art, diverse literary references, and our bond with the natural world, as well as observations on raising two young sons and reflections of her own life growing up along Florida’s Atlantic coast. Essays that address the school carnage are presented without adherence to strict chronology at times, yet Davis delivers a cohesive work that is uncomplicated and interwoven with subtle, compelling, and poignant perspectives on the world around her and life as witnessed by a scholar seeking answers through informed observations, sometimes from the window of her study. Her prose is uncomplicated, almost conversational, straightforward, and inquisitive, and some essays are structured around short passages punctuated with subtitles, much like writings in a diary or journal. It is through this creation of literary agency that Davis does, indeed, become the storyteller, philosopher, and conveyor of sage observations in this short collection. The fatal shooting of twenty very young children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in December of 2012 is the foundation for the eight essays presented in Part One of The Nail in the Tree, which chronicles the years before and after. Davis and her family lived in a home on the outskirts of Newtown at the time of the shootings, and we learn the abode provided a sanctuary and healing place of sorts in the years that followed. A mother of two grammar-school aged sons — whose presence and impact on her life are featured regularly — Davis opens the work with a rhetorical question: How and when to inform a five and nine-year-old that a tragedy took place at a grammar school in their community. It is a challenge that other parents of young children in Newtown and elsewhere in the nation had wrestle with that year in the middle of what should have been a joyous holiday season. Early in the debut essay, subtitled the day of the shooting, Davis recounts learning of the massacre while teaching a university class: Ninety seconds pass — not that long, less than a minute — before it is clear to me that Hawley School is not the site of the shooting, but Sandy Hook, a school closer to our house but by an accident of zoning not my children’s school. This revelation — a municipal government decision beyond the control of Davis and her family that spared her sons from potentially being physical or emotional casualties — propels her to write about the long-standing impact of the massacre and its ramifications over her psyche in the years ahead. In the third essay, “The Practice of School Busses and Hummingbirds: in the year that comes after,” Davis describes the impetus as “the aftermath, and the after-aftermath which is the present moment from which I’m writing, all of it new and impossible to comprehend.” Davis grapples with how to maintain some semblance of normal daily life as a mother, writer and professor who oversees her sons boarding the school bus, and how to push forward; she does so by recording observations of a hummingbird during the last weeks of the summer season, referencing musings of thirteenth century Persian poet Rumi and interpreting the symbolism of the mythological one-eyed, one-tooth Graeae sisters. (One certainly can ascertain that the author is not bound by literary genre or century for inspiration!) Davis states that she’s unable to arrive at a...

Leadership Matters: Police Chief Race and Fatal Shootings by Police Officers

ObjectiveThis study analyzes the relationship between the race of a city's police chief and the incidence of fatal shootings by police officers.MethodsThe Washington Post's “Fatal Force Database” is used to calculate per‐capita rates of fatal shootings by police officers occurring between January 1, 2015 and June 1, 2020 for the 100 largest cities in the United States. I compare fatal shooting rates for cities with police chiefs of different races, both unadjusted and adjusted for differences in city characteristics.ResultsRates of fatal shootings by officers are almost 50 percent higher in cities with police forces led by white police chiefs than in cities with black police chiefs. Of the 30 cities with the highest rates of fatal shootings, 23 have police departments led by whites and only four have departments led by blacks, while of the 30 cities with the lowest rates, 16 have police departments led by blacks and only 11 are led by whites. Differences in fatal shooting rates persist after controlling for city characteristics.ConclusionLeaders in the highest position of authority may have a powerful effect on the culture of a police department and its resulting behavior.

Creating Guardians or Warriors? Examining the Effects of Non-Stress Training on Policing Outcomes

High-profile fatal police shootings of persons of color in recent years have led some to propose changes in the ways that police officers are trained to reduce violence in interactions between officers and citizens. This article explores the impact of a non-stress-oriented training model that some police academies have adopted as an alternative to traditional militaristic training models. We integrate multiple theoretical perspectives to develop the expectation that training interventions will have a significant impact on the nature of police/citizen interactions only when turnover of officers is sufficiently high. Results from analyses of 133 middle- to large-sized municipal police departments in 2013 suggest that non-stress training is significantly associated with reductions in use of deadly force by officers in those departments where recruits trained under such regimes make up a larger portion of the force. We do not find a significant direct or moderated effect on the number of police injured in confrontations with citizens or in the prevalence of discretionary arrests.